Alternatives to “Likes” on Social Media

Most social media platforms invite users to reply "Like" a Tweet, Post or Photo. It might be fun, for instance, when a dozen people "Liked" a photo of my salad. As argued, in "The Social Dilemma," however, piles of like can serve to steer people into tribes. This can happen when people post conclusions rather than thoughtful discussions.  It can happen when people make ad hominem attacks on their least favorite politicians and simplistic cartoons of complex social issues, such as immigration.

What is social media for?  That's a good question and it might evoke ten different answers from ten people.  Is it for cat videos and photos of one's children or is it appropriately used for discussing critically important social issues?  The suggestion that I'm about to make is for those of us who see social media as an opportunity to engage in serious conversations about important issues of the day with others in our network. Those not interested in serious discussions are invited to continue sharing cat photos.

I would suggest that in addition to the "Like" option, we add a few other options, including the following:

  • Your post merely parrots a talking point of one of the two political parties.
  • You are making an ad hominem attack on a person, not providing me with useful information.
  • You are engaged in a [cognitive bias] [logical fallacy].
  • Your post caused me to think about a topic in a new way.
  • Your post made me less certain of an opinion that I had.
  • Your post made me realize that this topic is more complex than I realized.
  • Your post states the facts fairly, but I still disagree with you.
  • You provided me with new intriguing information that I appreciate.
  • Your post made me angry, but I am glad you read it.
  • Your post irritates me, I disagree with you, but I value you as a friend.

I'm sure there are others that should be considered.  The main question is whether we are satisfied hoot panting for each other to display tribal loyalties or whether we want to be challenged to understand out world better . . .

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What Should be Done about the Way Many Schools are Preaching Critical Race Theory to their Students?

Bari Weiss has written a column that includes a comprehensive discussion with Christopher Rufo and attorney/writer David French. It is a highly civil and insightful discussion. She begins her column with this:

If you are reading this, I suspect you are disturbed by an ideology that segregates people by race; that insists on a racial hierarchy in which entire racial groups are monolithically good or bad; that does away with race-blind tests in the name of progress; and that insists that any inequality of outcome is evidence of systemic discrimination.

Those are bad ideas at odds with our most foundational American values. On Friday, Andrew Sullivan published an essay arguing that CRT removes the “bedrock of liberalism.” I agree.

The question is: What should be done about it? . . . The idea of banning ideas should make any American shudder.

In my discussion below, everything I write is a paraphrase other than the bits of text that are in quote marks.

At min 35 in the discussion French asserts that the many new statutes banning there teaching of critical race theory "flat out violate the constitution." I agree with Weiss and French. There is a big difference between teaching about a subject and preaching that subject in a way that makes students feel that they are compelled to agree. French disputes that the CRT movement has deep radical control over America's institutions, even though it is influential. He believes that we have the means, including our legal system, of addressing this ideology. He worries that overblowing the force of CRT is mustering a anti-First Amendment pushback on the political right (e.g., regulating big tech and anti-CRT legislation).

Rufo "strongly disagrees, urging that CRT is overwhelming American institutions from coast to coast, and that these are extraordinary and dangerous times. He argues that the State does not have free speech rights. They, through public schools, have a state run monopoly and a captive audience (that consists of children, even young children) upon which they are forcing compelled speech that takes the form of "racial poison." Children should not be compelled to express belief in racial essentialism, racial discrimination, the need for collective guilt or the need to acknowledge that one is responsible for the crimes of one's ancestors. He argues that the State, though Departments of Education, already have the power (and obligation) to implement the school curricula.

French responds (at min 45) that much of the proposed legislation is not necessary in that there are already robust Constitutional protections against compelled speech. Further, many of the bills are not limited to K-12 education. Unconstitutional grant-making is already illegal by the theory of "unconstitutional conditions." We need to take these bills "bill by bill." There might need to be a lot of litigation about this, in that many of these bills are wildly vague. French completely agrees that compelled CRT speech is improper (with or without the new bills). Some of these bills improperly take aim at some of the foundational principles of traditional liberalism.

Rufo argues that these new ("race neutral") laws are necessary to protects one's right to conscience. He argues that communities ought to be able to enforce their own values in their own institutions, which they fund. He argues that many of the laws allow the teaching of CRT as a theory, in a contextual way, but you can't force your students to believe them. You cannot teach CRT as a dogma. He argues that the State has much more "shaping power" in K-12, grades that students are required to attend. He argues that the public should also do whatever it can to shape the values instilled by public colleges, including criteria for grant-making, which many of these new laws seek to protect.

French compares to teaching religion. The Constitution allows teaching about Christianity, but not teaching it "as truth."

Weiss asks French what he would suggest to combat CRT if these new state laws are unconstitutional. He suggested local courageous control of schools. Get involved in your child's school. Many non-elite public schools are not steeped in CRT. There are many opportunities to speak up. In K-12, the state is already given lots of leeway to determine curriculum. Laws affecting that cannot be unconstitutionally vague.

French: The question is not whether these ideas are good. The question is what are the limits of constitutional protection? Many of these bills attack compelled speech, but the First Amendment already protects students from compelled speech. Right now, no school has the right to force a student to wrote a letter of apology to students for one's "white privilege."

Rufo urges that these bills are necessary because students are being forced to do such things. Rufo states that he has a database of more than 1,000 institutions where students are currently being forced to engage in such behavior.

French responds: "Then file a lawsuit." He admits that only the Idaho statute comes close to being constitutional. The other statutes ban the expression of particular viewpoints. (Min 1:02:00). This is lawful only in narrow circumstances (re state employees). The universities do not have First Amendment rights, but the professors do, and based on French's experience as an attorney, most of these new laws will be struck down as speech codes, if challenged in court.

French "wants to hear" from those who promote CRT. He disagrees with many of these ideas, but he wants to hear them, understand them and, I many cases, reject them. But he does not want to ban these ideas from the marketplace of ideas.

Weiss to French: Aren't the CRT promoters trying to erase the ability of people like French to reject CRT?

French: There is no doubt that many of these people want to shut him up. There are speech codes and they generally fail in the courts. Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) indicates that at one time 80% of colleges had speech codes.  As a result of litigation, only about 25% of them currently have speech codes.

At min 111, both French and Rufo, who have Multi-racial families, describe how they talk with their own children about their "identities and about what it means to be American." It was a heartfelt ending to a vigorous and engaging conversation.

Follow up Tweet by David French:

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How Pervasive is the Teaching of Critical Race Theory?

Last month, Andrew Gutmann started speaking out against critical race theory, as it was being taught at his daughter's private expensive Manhattan school, Brearley School. In his letter to the Brearly community, he accused Brearly of teaching children illiberal and indoctrinating antiracism initiatives and divisive obsession with race. Gutmann has founded Speak Up For Education. .

Today, Gutmann authored an opinion piece at The Hill. Here is an excerpt:

There appears to be widespread belief that opposition to critical race theory is a view held solely by the political right. This perception is wrong. It is certainly true that the conservative media has almost exclusively embraced viewpoints unfavorable to critical race theory while the liberal-oriented media has been overwhelmingly approving. But our polarized media does not seem to accurately reflect the view of most Americans.

Since my letter became public, I have received several thousand supportive emails and messages from people across this country, including many from self-described Democrats and liberals. The tone of most of the messages sent to me is not at all political in nature; instead, the tenor is one of desperation and powerlessness.

I have received emails from parents expressing devastation that their kids, as young as five years old, are coming home from school after being taught to feel guilty solely because of the color of their skin. I have received messages from grandparents feeling hopeless that their grandchildren are being brainwashed and turned against their own families. And I have received notes from teachers brought to tears because they are being required, day after day, to teach fundamentally divisive, racist doctrines and being forced to demonize their own students.

Perhaps the most powerful – and most frightening – of the notes I have received are the several dozen from those who identify themselves as having immigrated to America from the former Soviet Union or from countries in formerly communist Eastern Europe. These emails are never political in nature and are nearly identical in message: These first-generation Americans all write that they have “seen this movie before.” They are familiar with the propaganda, the tactics of indoctrination and the pervasive fear of speaking up that plague today’s United States. Simply put, they cannot believe this is happening here.

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Long Form Podcasts as a Remedy for Tribal Thinking

A friend is quite perturbed at me for (as I view it) not adopting the top-to-bottom progressive platform. The friend found it disturbing that I would get some of my information from sources that the friend considered to be the other team. I told this friend: "You are the 1,000th person to get frustrated with me for wanting to get my facts straight without reference to the prevailing narratives of political tribes. I am prepared to die on this hill."

I am wired to make sense of things as best I can, letting the chips fall, regardless of whether I offend people in the process (with rare exceptions).  I was prepared for this way of learning during a childhood where my father force-fed me buckets of religious dogma, resulting in this five-part essay.

I am willing to get useful information from anyone who has information that seems useful.  I'm working hard to not divide the world into "good" people and "bad" people.  Good people often say untrue things and bad people often say things that make sense. Everyone has a batting average. Everyone is flawed. It is my act of faith that we need to listen to all of it and then pretend that we are emotionally detached Martian anthropologists in order to decide what is accurate. In other words, we need to pay close attention to John Stuart Mill, who is as relevant as ever.

Hence, I reject any Manichean outlook. I fear that our two main political tribes and their respective news silos (amplified by social media) are poisoning our national dialogue. In fact, ruining our national dialogue to the point where, truly, our de facto national motto is getting to be "Fuck e pluribus unum!"  It's gotten to the point where people are hating other people for ideas, whereas I think we can hate the idea but must always love the person. I am not religious, but I think that Jesus' "Love your enemy" is one of the most radical, brave and brilliant things ever said.

We need to listen to people that others call the "enemy" because sometimes they are right--sometimes it takes years for it to become apparent that they are correct. I have long been ridiculed for listening "to the enemy." That is, and will forever be, my plight, because the world is complex, not a cartoon, and no tribe has it completely right. We need to actively listen to each other and test each others' claims without feeling like this is a threatening thing to do, in order to make good sense of our world. Without each other, we are all prone to become ideologues who "win" all of our arguments because we refuse to consider competing views (and in fact many of us actively work to muzzle competing views). Hard earned, carefully distilled facts first to prepare the way for meaningful opinions, is the only way to make sense. Whenever we do the opposite, indulging in thinking and opinion-vomiting as a team sport, we are poisoning all dialogue and shutting down human flourishing.

I believe that real conversation (not the pundits barking at each other on CNN, or regular folks on the street, imitating the pundits) will dissolve many of the differences we see in each other. That brings me to an inspiring dialogue I recently heard: a discussion involving Joe Rogan and Glenn Greenwald. This is an odd couple in many ways. At the beginning of the show they both admitted that, in prior years, they weren't each others' favorite people. But they reached out, sat down for three hours and had a riveting conversation that covered many issues, including whistle-blowers, corruption in Brazil, Hunter Biden. My favorite part is where Joe and Glenn discussed the importance of reaching out to people who think differently in order to understand them and to better understand yourself.

Rogan and Greenwald both tout the long-form podcast as one of the best ways to dissolve the pundit-coating that people construct around themselves and to then get down to some interesting conversation--the kind of conversation where people learn interesting things about each other and about themselves. You can be a politician for a short session on FOX or NPR, maybe even 30 or 40 minutes, but you can't hide it for several hours. Rogan mentions that he stumbled upon this powerful revelation because he was too lazy to edit his long podcasts, but then he started to appreciates incredible power of the long-form podcast to reveal who people really are.  This conversation between two wide-open complex minds is pure gold, and I invite you to listen to the entire podcast, but especially from 118 min mark to the 140 min mark.  You can also read along here (beginning at 2:01:38).

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